Fellows of the Grave
by brandend
Summary: Ten conversations Death has with the recently deceased, and two he has with those who barely escape him.


All about is dark when Shireen wakes, if she could call it waking at all, for she does not stir, cannot stir, just lies prone and lifeless in such emptiness, such a void, and it's queer because she recalls there just being fire and snow and smoke and the soaring of carrion-birds above. There had been cries, cries that must have been hers. Somehow she does not feel alive, and she tries to bring her hand to her heart to feel it beating yet, but she finds that she cannot move, realises that her chest can neither rise nor fall, that no longer is she breathing, that no longer does she burn.

"Shireen," someone whispers, as if gently stirring her from slumber. He's deep and soothing, as still as seas.

"Father?"

He doesn't sound like Father, stern and rather curt in his way, and it isn't her sweet Onion Knight, or Patches with his singing and trembling of breath, but she asks it all the same.

"No. I am Death."

"Where are the gods? I always thought there would be gods when I died," Shireen says. There were the Father, the Mother, the Warrior, the Smith, the Maiden, the Crone, and the other she had never liked to say, the one in the hooded mantle. They all had blazed on the sands of Dragonstone. "We would feast and laugh and love in the Father's golden hall."

"There are no other gods but Death, and beyond me is the longest night. Say _now_ and I shall take you to it."

"Mother always used to say there were the Seven until Melisandre told her of the Lord of Light, and that the dead would ascend to the Hall of Light to sit with the Lord. There is no red god, either, is there?"

"No. I am all, and after me there is nothing."

She remembers again the snow. There was a pyre, and the servants had tied her to it, kicking and screaming. She could hear nothing but her own wails and the roaring of fire and the squalls of crows, could see nothing but the great rack of clouds and her mother's paling-eyed stare before all was surrounded in a fury of smoke, could feel nothing but the ash searing her lungs and the flames scalding and melting and peeling her skin from her black-broiling flesh.

If a wave of terror could have run through Shireen at the remembrance, it doubtless would have.

"You have no need to fear Death. I do not hurt, child."

"No, _you_ don't hurt," Shireen says, "but dying did. It hurt terribly."

"I regret that it had to be fire. I should have liked to have come to you when you were grey and full of sleep, during a long and fruitful summer, with your children and grandchildren at your bedside, but some things I cannot let come to pass."

"Why did you have to come for me now?" She's barely two-and-ten, yet a child, or she _was_ two-and-ten and then a child. "Why did my father and Melisandre burn me?"

"They thought it needed to be so."

"Why?"

"There were prophecies. The cold breath of darkness would fall heavy on the world once more. Azor Ahai would come again, born amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone, bearing a burning sword tempered with fire and blood, and would make the world anew, bringing a ceaseless summer."

"Is my father Azor Ahai?"

"No. They say Death will kneel before Azor Ahai. I will not bend the knee to Stannis Baratheon. His sword glows from the Red Witch's magic, though it gives no heat. She thought he might have needed a Nissa Nissa to temper it again, but he drew from your pyre no flaming sword, no Lightbringer. Your mother's eyes sting with your ash in her tears. Still the Cold Ones come beneath a bleeding of stars, and there is no sword to cleave the night."

"I died for nothing."

"Yes, you died for nothing. Some things must be so."

"You're cruel. I wanted to _live_."

"I am not cruel. Just impartial. I am Death, and though all men wish to live, all men must die. For some I am a sinking off to sleep, and for some I am a rage of fire and a turbulence of blood, and for many I will be ice, but nonetheless I come for all."

Shireen tries to bite her lip. Father and Melisandre and perhaps Mother too had been cruel as well, if they burnt her so, even if they had meant to hold back night with the fires of her death, but it does not seem to matter now.

"Is there anything else you must know, child?"

 _After me there is nothing._ "Will I remember it if you tell me?"

"No. Beyond me is the longest night. You will tell me when you are prepared to go to it."

"Does Ser Davos know?"

She misses Ser Davos already, with his grey beard and brown eyes and kind face, and his bag of finger-bones, and his stilted reading in his funny Flea Bottom accent, and how caring and tender and loyal he is to her father, to her. _Was. Might yet have been._

"He does not know yet of what your father and the Red Witch have done. But do not worry about your Onion Knight, child. He will be well for a time, until I must speak to him also."

She doesn't know how he would be well, for Ser Davos had near loved her as the daughter he had never had, and her death, she fears, will trouble him. "Must you speak to him?"

"Death must have discourse with all he takes, and all men must die, including Ser Davos Seaworth."

"Will I see him and Mother and Father after they've talked with you?"

"No. You will all have gone to your silences. After me there is nothing."

"Will it be quiet in Westeros, too?" Shireen can barely imagine how life would linger on without her there to see it unfolding. It is a hard enough thought for a man full grown, much more so for a child.

"In the Seven Kingdoms, the moon pales cold as a skull, and the light drains from the stars, and the great red leaves of the weirwoods beyond the Wall shiver beneath a skin of frost. The Iron Throne is no more than a shattering of steel beneath a sifting of snow. All of Planetos lies in a soundless and unending expanse of ice. But this you shall never feel."

"And spring comes again?"

Death is silent, as is Shireen. She knows what his muteness means.

"Child?"

"What could have been? Instead?"

"There are many things that could have been. Your life never could have been a song, Shireen, but I will make it so for a time, as best as I am able. Winter comes and winter goes, as seasons might have. Your lord father dies in his attempt to secure the Iron Throne, but you become Lady of Dragonstone after his death. There is always the salt of the sea on your skin and the cawing of the gulls in your ears and the pulse of the waves in your heart. You are ever home."

"More."

"You wed at eight-and-ten. His name matters none, but he is a lord. Your lord husband loves you for your soft valour and compassion, and when he strokes your cheek and kisses your forehead, he tells you he loves you just as well for the grey hardness of stone that you are, because nothing will ever break you. You bear him no sons, just three daughters who are loved as deep as oceans, who mature to know neither want nor winter. Ser Davos comes often to Dragonstone, bringing books from his travels to Braavos, and you beam at _him_ helping _your_ girls to read as they all attempt to clamber into his lap."

"More."

"It is a long life, a contented life. Selyse and Aryna and Cassana wed, and you have grandchildren upon whom you dote. One is called Davos. I come for you in your sleep when you are four-and-seventy, and then it is a mere passing into the quiet. In the crooks of the rocks around Dragonstone, the cliff-lilies bloom and tremble in the wind, and the sea yet thrashes against the shore, and the world yet abides in its gyring of stars."

It's a dream. A pretty dream. A dream of a summer that will never be.

"Now."

And Death is a beating of wings.

* * *

I'm kind of blending book and show canon here with all the Shireen & Davos feels, but deal with it. I needed to make myself cry somehow. ¯\\_(ツ)_/


End file.
